Wanted dead or alive by three warring Goddesses, Oriana must journey into the heart of the Thornwood to seek the aid of a legendary phoenix and right the wrongs of her bloody past.
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Sebastian couldn't breathe.
It didn't help that the windowless walls kept closing in every time he gave in to sleep. What started off as a small room was now barely tall enough to stand in; he could slink on his belly as a wolf, but that only made the tomb feel even smaller. And the air... Bigger lungs required more air.
It was already so thin. Sticking in his throat. Bulging his eyes. His bladder ached, but there was nowhere to relieve himself, and he wasn't desperate enough to forgo dignity... yet.
Acidic panic ate through his heart as he thought about his predicament again. Stuck. There was no other word for it; he was stuck. His breath came quicker, shorter.
No, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. That will only use more air.
As would crying out for help, or clawing at the walls. He'd tried to dig his way out at first, arrogant in his own strength, but the crystal refused to budge. Even stone would give way sooner than this cursed quartz that was not quartz, and he knew plenty of crystalline structures from his time living in the Wyld Heart, the ever-changing land of the fae. Crystal was soft. It crumbled.
This stuff was hard as steel. Harder, even.
Instead of a tunnel to freedom, all he had to show for his efforts was chipped claws and wasted breath. He strained to stay awake, but the heat was so smothering and oppressive that he often passed out with no recollection of losing consciousness. One moment he blinked, the next the walls had closed in again.
I should have died out there, he thought bitterly. Where the sky was open and he was free — and most importantly of all, so was Oriana.
It was her face he pictured when despair rocked him to the core. The sweet, heart shape of it; the softness of her cheek when his calloused fingertips pressed in; the hot silk of her mouth when his thumb trailed over her full, bottom lip. The fire in her eyes he loved most of all, but then there was the way the air shimmered around her, and the way she felt clasped in his arms...
Mine, he thought again, but his savage satisfaction was echoed by something bleak. She was not his; not truly. They were mates, yes, but only per his mother's design, and the Night Goddess gave nothing freely, especially not a woman so brave and kind and wonderful. The only way for Sebastian to claim her in all ways would be to lower the wall around his heart and open the well of silver power churning in his core, but doing so would leave him exposed. Power could run both ways, and he would not become a puppet again.
Nor would he sacrifice Oriana's autonomy. She had fought long and hard to win freedom from the Blood Moon tribe. He would not be so selfish as to send her spinning into the arms of an uncaring Goddess. Once their minds and souls were linked, Sebastian would become just another string for the puppet Nya truly wished to control; the only one who could wield the lost Sun Goddess's power and save humanity — nay, this very star — from Eternal Night.
And he was supposed to be king of it all.
Sebastian's skin prickled, and he pressed up against the far wall. Something was amiss. The walls were... changing.
Thinning. Clearing. Like blowing glass from a bright lob of molten glass into something brittle and transparent, the far wall changed, admitting a golden, glowing figure. A glorious hand, four fingers splayed, as if they were going to push right through into his cell.
His heart rate spiked, the air becoming sticky and humid as the temperature rose along with that of his body. Could it be? he wondered, already readying himself to seize her lovely wrists so she could pull him out. Out there, there would be space and time to sweep her into his arms and kiss her against the floor until she became just as dizzy as he was.
He was furious with her for endangering herself, of course. She should have left him to rot, but he'd missed Oriana more than the tangled woods and crisp, mountain air. More than the food his stomach snarled over and the drink that would soothe his parched, twisting throat. All of it could wait so long as she was here.
A light swung closer to the wall, and he realised his error. The hand was not truly golden, as Oriana's was, but plated in interlocking scales. It was far too large, as was the figure behind it.
Despite the armour, belonging to the Sun Warrior regiment, the power that leaked between the man's fingers was... cold. Icy, in fact, making the temperature in his cell plummet so quickly that Sebastian's breath frosted on the new glass window.
A silver-limned window. The rock worn away as if over a long period of time, eroded as a cliff under a relentlessly beating sea.
"Free yourself," the strange warrior demanded, his voice muffled and distorted. "Use your power."
Ah. Another of his mother's puppets, then. "I'd rather die," Sebastian said callously. It was true; he would love to spite his mother by simply ceasing to exist. Almost as much as he would love to overthrow her, but it was the fanciful dream of a mayfly wishing away a storm.
"It is not you who needs saving," the figure boomed again.
Sebastian launched himself at the wall with a roar, intending to shatter the pane while it was thin.
Too slow. Nya's Grace leaked from the sun warrior's fingertips. Gravity worked its wonders even in the heart of enemy territory, compressing the crystal until it blackened and cleared all over again, this time diamond bright. Sebastian rebounded like a bird striking window glass, an impact that dazed the senses and strained his very bones.
Panting hard, Sebastian slumped back. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heart, too hot and hard for his liking.
Oriana was in danger; that much was clear. He ached to protect her, but which was the bigger threat: the enemy out there, or the one he caged within himself?
Groaning, Sebastian let his head fall back and wished, for the first time in a long time, that there was somebody he could pray to.
